As we welcome students back from their summers away from school, I think it’s important to consider how our students may have experienced the summer differently. There were nine Black people murdered in a church in Charleston; there were several more shootings of Black men at the hands of White police officers; a young Black woman committed suicide in a Texas jail after being pulled over for switching lanes without a signal; and a young White woman was murdered in San Francisco by an undocumented Latino man which prompted San Francisco to reconsider it’s “sanctuary city” status.

Charles Blow, an African American columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page, once said in an interview that Black men in the US spend an inordinate amount of emotional and physical energy holding themselves just-so, so as not to inadvertently trigger the deep-seated fear of Black men that seems to pervade our national subconscious. As we have seen over the course of history, the stakes can be very high for Black men who are perceived to be threatening or dangerous—we kill them, send them out of our classrooms and schools, put them in prison, look away when, as young men, they need guidance rather than punishment. There have also been many, many accounts narrating the physical and emotional toll that living in the US as an undocumented person can take—with a perpetual and omnipresent fear and wariness of suspicion and ultimately deportation.

One can argue that when a group of people experience unjust violence and threat over time, there is a collective sense of fear, caution, and outrage that become internalized. This summer, violent events have played out on the national stage. Whether or not our students watch or read the news outlets, we may assume that they and/or their families experienced some or all of the effects of that violence on the souls of their communities.

To what extent are our Latino students coming to school this year holding some fear about being deported or fear that people they love and depend upon will be deported? To what extent might they hold fear that people will associate them with Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez? To what extent might they hold fear about being perceived as sexual predators, as Donald Trump infamously alleged? To what extent are our African American students coming into our classrooms holding in their souls the fear and outrage that have been compounded by the shootings in Charleston, the death of Sandra Bland, and the other acts of violence from this summer?

I believe these circumstances affect how our students are showing up this fall after a summer away from school. Their willingness to take risks in the classroom may be affected. Their engagement in building relationships with new adults may be affected. Their experience of authority and rules in your classrooms and in our school may be affected. Their experience of the relevance of our curriculum may be affected.

As educators committed to equity and justice, we know that our students may need different kinds and levels of support in order to reach the same outcomes of strong achievement and positive school experience. We may need to hold more acute awareness of the larger context of the recent events in our country as we interact with students who may have internalized those events. So, for example, in your classroom, when an African-American student does or says something that you think calls for correction or reprimand, how do you not escalate the situation beyond its original size? This interaction in the classroom has the potential to resemble now infamous interactions between police officers and African American drivers that have had tragic results for the drivers. What might be happening when you ask a Latino student this week why she doesn’t have her homework? When you ask about who lives with her (as you try to understand the circumstances related to her getting her homework done,) how might your questions about her home life trigger fears that you are trying to find out information that you could communicate to ICE? In both examples, our students’ fear and caution may not be conscious, but rather the internalized, subconscious fear and wariness resulting from repeated acts of violence over time on their communities.

So, as we get started into our second week of school, I want us to hold carefully in our minds this awareness. This awareness doesn’t mean that we don’t hold our African American and Latino students to high expectations in classroom learning or in behavior. It means that we think about ways to accomplish our goals of engaging students in classroom learning, in creating an environment of risk-taking, in creating a predictable and structured learning environment that honor what our students have experienced this summer and over time—as individuals and as members of communities.

As always, I don’t expect that we do this alone. We build relational trust so that we can support each other to realize what it means to be educators for equity. Here’s to being a community of educators that remain committed to educating our young people in the face of the abhorrent racism that the summer of 2015 delivered to us.

Related Data

– “A white gunman opened fire Wednesday night at a historic black church in downtown Charleston, S.C., killing nine people before fleeing and setting off an overnight manhunt, the police said. At a news conference with Charleston’s mayor early Thursday, the police chief, Greg Mullen, called the shooting a hate crime.” Horowitz, J. (2015, June 17). Nine Killed in Shooting at Black Church in Charleston. New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2015, from www.nyt.com

– “The head of the Texas state police department faced fierce grilling by lawmakers here Thursday over the confrontational behavior of a trooper in the arrest of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in her Waller County jail cell this month, three days after she was taken into custody after a routine traffic stop.” Montgomery, D. (2015, July 30). Texas Trooper’s Behavior Called ‘Catalyst’ in Sandra Bland’s Death. New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2015, from www.nyt.com

– “The case of a Mexican laborer with a lengthy criminal record who was charged on Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an American woman on a pier in San Francisco has exposed a gulf of mistrust and failed communication between the federal authorities and the police in California over immigration enforcement. The man, most recently known as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, 56, pleaded not guilty in Superior Court in San Francisco in the murder of Kathryn Steinle, 32, who was strolling last Wednesday with her father and a friend on Pier 14 near the Ferry Building when she was struck in what the police described as a random shooting. Mr. Lopez-Sanchez, whose criminal record includes seven felony convictions, had been deported from the United States five times, raising questions about why he was in the United States. Questions were also raised late Tuesday about the gun used in the killing. A law enforcement official confirmed local media reports that the serial number showed the gun belonged to a federal agent. The official declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly… A San Francisco ordinance, passed in 2013, broadly restricts the police from cooperating with immigration agents. City officials say the so-called sanctuary law has helped law enforcement by enhancing trust between the police and residents who are immigrants without documents.” Preston, J. (2015, July 7). San Francisco Murder Case Exposes Lapses in Immigration Enforcement. New York Times.

– Charles Blow on Real Time with Bill Maher: (2012). Real Time with Bill Maher [Television series episode]. In Real Time with Bill Maher. Los Angeles: HBO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBASk0q-uc

– “In a 2008 study done by the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, 31% of Latino adolescents in North Carolina showed signs of sub-clinical or clinical anxiety and 18% showed signs of depression. The study did not distinguish between those who are here legally and those who are undocumented, but the demographics of those surveyed reflect that 93% of the children were not U.S. citizens.” Bonifacio, K. (2013, January 5). Undocumented Youth Struggle With Anxiety, Depression. Retrieved August 23, 2015.